"No running water unless you sprinted while carrying the buckets."

Brilliant!

Re big pots: I agree, a very good idea. Boiling water a gallon at a time would drive me nuts.

I keep a few stainless steel stock pots around. I think they hold 20 litres (4 gal.) or so. They're not expensive new, and sometimes they come up in second-hand stores or garage sales for a few dollars. I can put two of those on my wood stove to melt snow or boil water as needed.

Another useful accessory would be a vacuum (Thermos) bottle or two. When I spent a month in China in 1993, water for drinking was provided everywhere our group went, either right off the stove or in a vacuum bottle - they were everywhere. Our group of twelve was in China a month, not in the usual tourist places, but well into the backcountry (Guizhou Province), eating locally prepared food always drinking boiled water. We had no cases of intestinal upset or Montezuma's revenge. Just one of the reasons I am such a fan.

If no thermos is available, a cozy can quickly be fabricated from a foam pad.

Having several large pots of water (with lids) can help you keep up with the multiple-person demand. It isn't just the heating-up time, it takes quite a while to cool down so it's usable. Having a series of pots can remove much of the nuisance value of having to do it.

Be careful about washing mucus membranes with contaminated water. Even regular E. coli in the eyes can turn into a problem.

Sue

We had a similar problem here just before Christmas. A main broke and much of the county was without water for a few hours (Guests were just arriving for my son's 30th). The initial problem was major for lots of people (they never do take the hurricane preparedness seriously) but only a minor inconvinence for us - bottled stuff, er - water to drink, fill buckets for the toilets, put out hand sanitizer and wet naps for hand cleaning, use disposables so no dishwashing would be required. Turned out the outage was short lived and the boil order was only a couple of days.

Respectfully,

Jerry

The common/normal e.coli is not all that 'bad' a bug. A few are now known (recent years) to be quite vicious. E. coli has historically been used (& will continue to be) as an INDICATOR bacteria, indicating fecal contamination-which contains various types of VICIOUS and DEADLY micro-organisms. NOT just to the immuno-compromised individual, but to EVERYONE!!
I could list the extensive possibilities of illnesses and diseases (some FATAL) of food/water fecal contamination, but if you care, google it.

gimpy